Once upon a time, in the vast realm of online multiplayer gaming, players of all ages and backgrounds united to embark on thrilling virtual adventures. However, —
A dark cloud loomed over this Digital landscape—a cloud of toxicity, fueled by verbal abuse, bullying, and negativity.
This toxic behaviour not only ruined the gaming experience but also left lasting scars on the mental health and well-being of young players.
Through extensive research, collaborative efforts, and a passion for positive change, our team set out to tackle the toxicity that plagued the gaming world. Our mission?
To create a more inclusive, respectful, and environmentally conscious gaming environment. Join us as we start this captivating expedition, examining the interconnected nature of toxicity and carbon emissions in gaming.
What is Carbon?
We created a platform that aims to eradicate toxic behavior in gaming. We do this by incentivizing positivity and providing a safe, friendly, and rewarding space for teens to meet like-minded gamers and create their own healthy, toxic-free communities.
Parents play a crucial role in safeguarding their children's gaming experiences. That's why Carbon provides parents with the knowledge and tools they need to ensure a safe space for their kids.
How did we achieve this?
We designed a range of features that incentivize positive behavior and discourage negativity. Using active speech moderation-based rankings to reduce toxic interactions, ensuring a healthier gaming atmosphere. But we didn't stop there. We understand that gaming isn't just about the gameplay—it's also about the after-hours camaraderie. That's why Carbon offers de-stressing features and friendly virtual lounges, providing a place to unwind and connect with like-minded gamers.
Not only does Carbon prioritize individual well-being, but it also recognizes the —
Importance of fostering a supportive community.
We understand the worries that parents face, and through Carbon, we aim to bridge the gap between the gaming community and concerned parents.
To understand the nuances of the problem and design an effective solution, we conducted extensive user research and analysis. Through surveys, interviews, and focus groups with gamers of all ages, we gained valuable insights into their experiences and challenges.
Our Team
Our team consisted of four passionate individuals, all driven by the shared goal of addressing the toxicity problem in online gaming and creating a safer, more enjoyable gaming experience.
Throughout the project, I actively contributed to various crucial areas, including:
- User research and analysis.
- Crafting user personas and scenarios
- Ideating and Building essential features
- Co-Creating wireframes, and conducting usability testing
Starting our Research
Once we assembled as a team, it was time to strategize and allocate tasks. Given that some of us were avid gamers ourselves, we drew from our personal experiences to shed light on the intricacies of the gaming world. To streamline our research and ensure seamless collaboration, we opted for a tool called Miro Board, where we funnelled all our valuable findings. This allowed us to maintain a centralised repository of insights, ensuring that everyone had access to the collective knowledge we gathered along the way.
First step - Reaching out to gamers
Our journey began by immersing ourselves in gaming communities across social media platforms, such as Reddit and Discord. As we delved into these spaces, a pressing issue quickly emerged—toxic behavior in online gaming was running rampant.
Our approach centered around understanding the demographics and gaming preferences most impacted by the toxicity problem. To accomplish this, we engaged with gamers through surveys. By gathering valuable insights, we aimed to uncover crucial information, such as:
- Which types of games were popular with different age groups?
- What was the common mode of communication in games?
- How often did people have negative interactions?
- What game did people face the most negativity in?
It became evident that the extent of toxicity varied depending on the game and the effectiveness of developers' moderation efforts. The anonymous nature of online gaming platforms seemed to amplify instances of toxic behavior.
The intense competitiveness inherent in gaming also fuelled negative interactions, exacerbating the problem.
It was disheartening to discover that millions of gamers, including potential future professional players, were affected due to the pervasive toxicity and harassment they faced based on factors such as race, sexual orientation, and more. This reality struck a chord with us, underscoring the urgent need to address this issue.
Existing solutions offered by industry-leading titles fell short in combating this massive problem. Third-party applications, in particular, seemed to take a lackluster approach to uprooting toxicity.
User Persona
With a better understanding of our target audience, we developed user personas and scenarios to guide our thought process in the design journey.
We crafted personas representing young and passionate gamers as well as concerned parents, taking into account their motivations, behaviors, and pain points.
Why? How? Ladder
Why-How Laddering is a technique used to delve deeper into a problem or challenge by expanding upon initial statements. By asking "why" and "how" questions, this method helps uncover underlying issues and insights that may not be immediately apparent.
How might we?
These thought-provoking questions served as the foundation for our exploration and guided us in generating innovative solutions to tackle the persistent issue of toxicity in gaming. Through our journey, we discovered actionable insights and devised strategies that would bring about a positive change in the gaming landscape.
Collecting Ideas
During our ideation sessions, everyone had the opportunity to share their thoughts, experiences, and innovative Ideas. Once we had a comprehensive list of ideas, we started a process of evaluation and selection. Each team member had the opportunity to review and rank the ideas based on their potential impact, feasibility, and alignment with our project goals. Through voting, we identified the top four ideas that gained the most support and had the greatest potential for addressing toxic behavior effectively.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
We were inspired by other gaming softwares to create low-fidelity wireframes of different layouts. We iterated on these wireframes to understand the different needs for a desktop layout.
Information Architecture
We had a clear vision for the features we wanted our application to have. We then created an information architecture (IA) to map out the different pages and features of the application. This IA helped us to design low-fidelity wireframes that were easy to turn into the final version of the application.
The final app
Introducing Carbon Ranks
A unique “nice-ness” based ranking system which rewards you on maintaining a healthy environment with your teammates & opponents. You get rewarded with unique and wholesome ranks, which you can flaunt to your teammates. The rankings are transparent about your status since your last gaming session and let you know if you’ve ranked up or down to let you adjust your discourse according to it.
Interaction Stats
A graphical format for you to check out your weekly interaction stats. Green, Yellow, and Red lines show you your overall positive and negative interactions game to game, therefore helping you deduce where all that negative energy is coming from.
Collectibles
Your positive interactions and rank-ups helps you earn special badges which you can use to flex your radiating wholesomeness. These badges get harder and harder to achieve but that's what makes them worth it!
Orbs on the other hand is what you earn from your peers. Make someone's day by supporting them if they are having a bad day, and they might gift you an orb which signifies comradery.
Rooms
Rooms provide a safe space for the community to come together and discuss whatever they want. You can discuss and get tips on how to handle those toxic stinkers or find some wholesome friends and add them to your regular lobby.
You can discover and meet alot of kind people in our public rooms, and you can be assured they just radiate wholesomeness because these rooms need to be earned.
After making some friends make sure to make private rooms to connect with them and plan those gamery weekends.
Launchpad
Launchpad showcases your whole library of games where you can customize the overlays and also the level of filtration you want. Customise and filter what you are comfortable with and what you dislike, which helps give you a safer environment to play in.
Managing overlays helps you customize how you want to view your in-game overlays and add breakout sessions so that you don't get stressed after some unfortunate losses.
Reflections
Throughout the course of this case study on toxicity in gaming, I gained valuable insights and experiences that deepened my understanding of the subject matter and its broader implications.
Key Takeaways
Community : The gaming sphere is alive due to its active and engaging community. We experienced this first hand while researching and meeting many good hearted people. Toxicity often plagues the gaming sphere as a whole but the community power should not be under-valued. A lot of public forums are moderated by the public and they do a great job. We need to steer the user experience in a way to leverage this supportive community.
Role of UX : The importance of a good UX beyond just playing games is to help gamers leverage their personal bonds. Its a tricky situation, as you don't want to spoon feed and steer the ship, but rather just give hints so the ship steers itself or the sphere heals itself. As much as we try to force people to be good to each other, we should establish that in our communities so it just seems natural to be kind.
Challenges
Measuring Toxicity : Once we start the conversation about toxicity, we need to figure out what we define as toxic. Banter, Humor and just friendly interactions can fade in and out of what we may think is toxic. It is heavily dependent on a person's personal boundaries. Passive Aggressive behavior would be very difficult to detect due to the nuances. In such cases, the only option is to depend on user feedback.
Systematic Issues: Recognizing that toxicity in gaming often stems from broader societal issues, such as discrimination and prejudice, posed a significant challenge. It underscored the importance of addressing these underlying problems to create lasting change.
The Future
Toxicity in gaming is close to my heart as I have been playing since I was a kid. This project still has explorable possibilities and nuances that could be dialed down even further. I hope to someday get an opportunity to work further in the battle of countering toxicity.
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4/24/23